When it comes to digital marketing methods, there are various types. SMS marketing is one among them. This is the most popular and direct marketing methods most marketers go for when they want to connect with their customers.
As the popularity of mobile device increased marketers focused on marketing methods based on the mobile device. They found short messenger service (SMS) marketing as an effective option.
But before you consider it as your marketing strategy you must check whether it suits your business.
How can you find out whether it is right for your business?
Sending messages is not a simple task.
Usually, everyone won’t open all the messages that they receive on their phone. So, the campaign should be well-planned.
Youngsters usually open all the messages they receive. First, you need to target your audience and create a campaign to attract them. It can turn in to a costly campaign if you haven’t planned properly.
But there are many ways you can follow to reduce the budget for an SMS campaign.
This is a complete guide for you about SMS marketing and how can it improve your business well.
What is SMS marketing?
Before going to further details, we need to check the definition of the term.
SMS marketing is the process of spreading permission-based text messages as part of product promotion. This is the best way to inform customers about various product promotions and offers.
Customers will get a chance to opt into this notification generally. A survey says that almost 60% of customers prefer SMS marketing than email marketing and push notification.
The main aim of this marketing is to build a wide customer base to a product.
By collecting data from customers, you can inform them about everything related to your business.
The best way to get more customer loyalty is through SMS marketing. So, if you are looking for the best solution to improve our marketing, check SMS marketing. Here are some popular benefits of SMS marketing
- Building customer loyalty is an important target of most of the marketers. You can promote business deals and offers through SMS marketing and gain their loyalty
- SMS marketing is a pathway to create word-of-mouth marketing, which is known as a powerful traditional marketing tool. By spreading SMS, you can bring customer engagement to your marketing strategies and make them as brand promoters
- Connect with customers is an excellent communication option which can build a strong relationship between your product and customers
- SMS marketing is known as one of the fast and effective marketing tools. This can help you to spread your message to any number of customers at the same time.
- It comes with an opt-in and opt-out option which you can use, to give a choice to your customers, to choose what they want. Customers who want to hear from you will definitely opt-in to your SMS marketing plan and another can opt-out from it.
- Cost-effective plan, where you don’t have to spend a lot of money to promote your product, compared to other types of marketing methods.
- Can save time through SMS marketing. Here there is an option for you to send many messages at the same time to chosen customers.
These are some benefits you can gain, by using SMS marketing to your business. Now, when you implement this, you must know some important strategies to use, to make it very effective.
How to Run a Successful SMS Marketing Campaign?
There are no easy ways to make your campaigns successful.
To stand out among your competitors is a difficult task. This needs hard work and dedication.
But, you can make your campaign successful if you can concentrate on the points given below.
Create a strong SMS marketing team:
Every marketing campaign needs a strong team to manage. This is not a simple task.
You need an SMS marketing expert, retail expert, a coordinator, a social media expert, digital designers, and many others on your team.
With the help of a team of skilled people, you can make this campaign successful. As strategies need to change more frequently, the team have to work closely and design their next strategy.
So, a complete team of experts who can handle their own roles well can create and make SMS campaign successful.
Target customers:
Targeting a particular group of customers is very important if you are planning to build a strong campaign.
There are many categories of customers based on their age, gender, region, preferences, etc. So, categorizing them should be the next strategy.
Know your customers using CRM software where they can connect with you. Also, check your product purchase history and demographics to get an idea about the customers who are interested in your product.
Categorize them and send them bulk messages as part of your promotions. This can help you to get a clear idea about your targeted market and create offers that attract them.
Send short and sweet messages:
When you send SMS as part of your product promotion, it should be clear within 160 characters.
The benefit of this short message is that customers can read it within 3 minutes and connect with your product.
You need to avoid open-ended messages also when you promote it. Open-ended messages are the type where you send a promotional offer without an end date.
When using this tactic, you should create a sense of urgency within customers and make them act, as soon as possible to avail that particular offer.
Include CTA buttons:
You can also include clear CTA to engage your customers. There are many CTA buttons you can use to engage your customers like Click here, Buy Now, Text to win, etc.
The main goal of marketers while conducting such campaigns is to engage their customers and make them participate in that campaign.
Both of this can happen if you can promote your product through an SMS campaign.
Send SMS on right time:
We discussed sending messages that can create an urgency to customers. Timing is also very important when you use this method.
For example, if you are sending an offer for the weekend, you can send it Friday afternoon.
Avoid sending offers too late or too early. Now every marketer agrees that there is a right time to promote everything. While sending the message, you should make sure to analyze the right time to reach your targeted customers and act accordingly.
Use every media to reach customers:
Another way to attract customers is to add an opt-in button at every contact points.
Social media, newsletters, point-of-sale, SMS, Website and many other points are there where you can give customers to opt-in to your SMS marketing plan.
If they are interested in knowing every update relate to your product, they can use this chance and enter their mobile number to opt-in. This can increase your customer base and make your campaign successful.
Focus on best customers:
You can focus your best customers and give an attractive incentive to them. They are the one who helps you to build your brand and increase its popularity.
Give them more importance and make them happy. Send your VIP customers more personalized messages that can make them part of your business.
Don’t offer them the usual offers that you offer to your general subscribers. This can help to create a great bonding with your customers and make them feel valued.
These are some successive strategies you can follow to make your SMS marketing effective. Just follow the strategies and create a winning SMS marketing campaign.
Innovative Ways to Use SMS Marketing:
Just than sending promotional SMS, there are many ways you can try to promote this campaign.
Innovative ways are always better than following old methods that everyone follows.
Your SMS marketing team will help you to create innovative ideas that can attract your customer’s attention. Here are some ways you can try
1. SMS polling:
This is a way you can use to get instant customer feedback. This can help you to get genuine opinions from your customers and can use it to promote your business.
SMS polling can help with your product promotion. It is also known as one of the fastest and direct ways of making two-way communication.
This is less cost-effective than using all costly CRM software to get their opinion.
2. 2Factor Authentication
Two-factor Authentication is another way to improve your application security. There are many companies which can protect your campaigns from phishing and hacking.
3. Instant polling:
Instant polling is also a good option to get a review or genuine opinions from your customers.
Many companies conduct surveys through social media channels. But no need to ignore SMS marketing, if you can target the right audience right time. This is a very cheap way to create a good bond with your customers. This can also help to make them feel valued.
4. Coupon distribution:
Use this medium for coupon distribution. This is a better way to reach to our customers than other marketing methods like email marketing.
People who use smartphones will surely check their messages and respond to them if they are interested.
Send them codes to make them easy to use these deals than just sending a plain text message about offers. They can copy paste this code to your product site while using this deal.
5. Bulk SMS:
Bulk SMS is another option to make your task easy. Here you can send bulk messages to your customers in one click.
Integrate SMS marketing with email marketing campaigns to make your job easy. This is a good way to create a better conversion rate.
You can include URLs to promote website traffic or encourage the audience to subscribe to your plans through SMS.
Tips to Optimize Bulk SMS Marketing Campaigns:
Bulk SMS campaign is the best way to make your marketing efforts successful. While following this campaign there are some rules you need to follow. Check out some useful tips for you
- Don’t overdo campaign and make their inbox full of promotional messages. They will get irritated easily if you don’t plan it well. You can promote it monthly or biweekly to make it more effective
- Make your database clean and new. Delete the old numbers from your database and send promotional messages to your current customers
- Don’t make their inbox spammy by sending irrelevant messages. Keep your customer’s data protected and don’t send any malware to your customers. It will make them lose trust in your business.
- Track campaigns and know how people respond to it. If you started a campaign to check the analytics, optimize your campaign.
- Prettify your links by using link shorter. It will help you to save spaces and keep it short and simple.
- Provide them with an option to opt-out from your campaign. This is a better way to make your plan more focused and effective. Only customers who are interested in your product will stay with you longer.
- Communicate your idea of getting their number. Make this message clear that you are using customer’s number to send promotional messages
- Don’t just send any unwanted messages. Send proper messages that can be valuable to your customers. You need to make sure that the message you send offers good value to customers. Make them stay in your campaigns by taking care of this point.
When used properly, SMS marketing is a powerful tool that can help you to gain more customers and increase your business.
You can work on your strategies and try something new, that can attract new customers to your plan.
Final Words:
An SMS marketing campaign is another form of marketing campaign you can try.
Even though there are so many other marketing campaigns SMS marketing campaign has got the power to influence more customers.
Targeting customers are very important and it will help you to create more focused and effective strategies.
Follow best practices and win customers love by offering them the best out of your product and services. Customers always support the quality of the products and services than anything else.